“White Horse” Progress Report 5: 1458 words

Made some good progress tonight. Not only was chapter three completed, but the novella is now taking shape. I’d reached the point in a previous draft and wasn’t quite sure where the story was going to go next, but fortunately my characters were established enough that they knew what to do and the scenes flowed one after the other.

It’s without a doubt my favorite part of writing: where you have no clue what is going to happen next in the story, and your subconscious takes over and continues the story for you . . . somehow. It feels like your characters are writing the story for you and you’re just along for the ride, which is kind of crazy to say, but is partially true in that some part of your mind is using the characters to drive the story. Sometimes this facet of writing is readily available and the story writes itself; other times it’s hard work, requiring rewrites.

Today was one of those important days where the complete story took its shape. This being the first novella I’m writing (I’ve either done short stories, full-length manuscripts, or short stories that turned into books), I was starting to wonder how to keep the story honed so that it wouldn’t turn into a full book. Well, today, my mind did it somehow, and the story has its novella shape now that just feels right.

Also the entire four-novella project feels less like a giant piece of work with no end in sight that will take years. Now I can somewhat see an end to this novella, with the whole project having more structure and substance.

Enough banter, time for some work in progress:

“Something on you mind Alan, or do you just like spooking your customers when they’re using the facilities?”

He laughed at that.

“No, something just came through the grapevine I wanted to pass along to ya.”

I was going to thank him before he said anything, but in the dim light I saw a serious look in his eyes I’d never seen before.

This wasn’t good.

“Seems like something’s spooked the honchos upstairs. Spooked them in a big way.”